Ep. 604: Foundations - For the Love of Does, Part 1

don't get any credit and it's a shame. You know, does make up a big part of the deer herd and they are directly responsible for raising future generations of white tails. And they're delicious and often just as challenging to kill as their male counterparts. But they don't have antlers. Well, I guess like one and eight thousand of them do.

But for the most part, of dough is a dough is a dough is a dope, But that's not really true, and it varies quite a bit from hunter to hunter, and how easy it is to not only get around them but kill them. I personally loved him. I love them so much. I'm going to talk about them for the next two weeks. And even if you're the biggest antler fetish hunter out there who cares only about big racks on the wall, you should give a listen, because learning about how to hunt does and help you hunt

the bucks better. A couple of weeks ago, we took my daughters to a local high school. By the time we got there, the parking lot was full of cars. Kids of all ages could be seen walking through the cold Minnesota morning to the front doors. Most of them were wearing jerseys. Inside, the activity increased. There were players and coaches and parents and parents all over in the hallways, and the distant sound of cheering and ref whistles filled the air. Our girls had three games on the schedule

in a matter of just four hours. To top it off, this nasty flu that is going around, or COVID two or whatever the hell it is had knocked their team back from nine players to seven, and one of those remaining girls she was fading pretty fast, so we could safely call it about six and a half players. The first game was a decent one, with my girls team taking an early lead and keeping it throughout both periods. Day one with twenty four points, which is about average

for fifth grade girls. Now, of those twenty four, one of my daughters scored twenty. She was pretty proud of herself, and so were we. Now. The second game looked to be a little bit more of a challenge, but our girls started out strong and they pulled out to a ten to zero lead, over coming a five bucket deficit. In that age group, it's not very easy, but the

opposing team managed to do it now. They even got a little help from my non twenty point scoring daughter, who, in a moment of not so great basketball awareness, shot into the wrong hoop. It was the first basket she made all day, and it ended up counting for the opposing team. It also tied the whole game up and sent us into overtime, so not ideal. We won thanks to a free throw from my daughter, who did not graciously provide opponents with an extra two points, so that

was good. The third game, I was a train wreck, but they came in second place. For the tournament, it was full of ups and downs, and while it was embarrassing when my daughter made a basket in the wrong hoop, it also helped that I was sitting by a woman whose daughter went zero for ten on free throws, and of those she airballed nine. Of them. Anyway, Even though my twin daughters were both playing on the same team in the same games, it was clear that one of

them is really, really good. I'm not ashamed to say the best on the team. The other she needs some work. I don't know, or maybe some golf clubs are volleyball or something. What does this have to do with deer hunting. Well, we are all deer hunters, right, We are all chasing the same species, yet we don't have the same skill sets. Sure, we wear the same jerseys, maybe looked up to the same coaches. But some of us are starters and some

of us are bench warmers. For now, some of us should focus on mature bucks, and some of us should be really happy to make a good shot on any deer, even if that deer doesn't have antlers and never would. That's right. Some of us should just be deer hunters with an emphasis on Does that might seem crazy or that I'm shooting on newbies or low experience hunters. That's

not my intention at all. I'm a firm believer in working your way up the ladder in life, and I think there is a progression to whitetail hunting that can be circumvented, but shouldn't be. How do you circumvent it? That's pretty easy. You just have to have a parent who I don't know, invested in an apple and kept all their shares until recently, and now that they've gifted you, I don't know, tens of millions of dollars. Just go out and buy a section or two of land in

Iowa or Kansas. Done and done. See it's pretty easy right now. There are other ways to circumvent the process too, but if you had those, you wouldn't be listening to me. So let's assume you don't, and let's ask another question, how easy is it for you to kill those? If you answer it's pretty dang easy, bro, i'd counter with, okay, when and where? Now? If you answered, well, it's kind of easy for me to kill dose, I'll just fill in the blanks here and assume that that's actually kind

of a nun. I learned that trick from a doctor one time, who asked me how much I drank. When I told him, he said, well, that's a lot, and I said, I don't know, man, I think that seems pretty reasonable, and he said, well, we double the amount you tell us because everyone lies to us, And I was like, how dare you call out the exact behavior I literally just did and make me sound like your run of the mill, lying idiot, which I just was.

The audacity of some folks. Killing dose seems easy because you know what, but what I said earlier, they don't have antlers. So a dough is a dough is a dough. The year and a half old dough. She gets lumped in with the old horsehead dough that is gray in the face, snorts at you when you even think about hunting, and has put two fawns on the ground and guided them to young adulthood every spring for a decade. Would

we do the same thing with bucks? I mean, would you say a forky is the same as a hundred and fifty in no, because that would be dumb as dumb as lying to your doctor, but a really unhealthy addiction that you have. We would say, well, oh no, those two deer have nothing in common. That forky. He's just young and dumb, and he has maybe his whole life ahead of him if somebody doesn't shoot him. He's no real challenge for a quote unquote real hunter. But

the one fifty. Let me tell you something. That dear isn't even really a dear. He's a wizard of the animal world that can wave his little magic wand and disappear in a whisper smoke. He can sense your presence through his sixth sense and feel the vibration of your heart beating through your first light vest from a half a mile away. He's so nocturnal he doesn't even remember

what it's like to move in the daylight hours. If you spook him, well son, you best target another buck, because that deer has done unpacked his bags and moved to a whole old new property, and now he's so cagy he actually digs a hole and hides in it after covering himself up with leaves another debris. All you'll see is an antler tip poking on the leaf litter if you see him at all, which you won't because he's practically invisible. Of course, this is all great a

level horseshit. A five and a half year old dough is probably pretty damn similar to a five and a half year old buck, at least when it comes to survival. The downside she has is that she's usually got little miles to feed, and that might put her in a position to take more risks the buck he can and does just look after himself. So where am I going with this? If you want to be a better deer hunter, you have to get better at hunting deer, all of them.

You will never be a great big buck hunter if you can't kill does on the same properties you're hunting those bucks. You will never be a really successful over the road buck hunter if you can't travel and shoot some adult does. Now, I know a lot of people might not believe this because we focus so hard on bucks, But let me share a couple of stories of my life about does to kind of frame this up for you. Now, I mentioned this one particular old gal a few times,

so I'll just keep it short. But I once co owned a little property in the suburbs here. We put in a kill plot on that place, and an old long nose dough claimed it. She would rear up and swat at the other deer that came in, both bucks and does, and was generally a great, a dear version of a biz natcho. So I said, well, I think it's time to put her in the freezer. But she was on to that stand that we had over the plot. So out smarter, I put a ground blind in there

as well. I figured she would never see me in the blind and never know for sure if I was in there until it was too late. Except when I did sit that blind and I did try to draw on her, she busted me instantly. I tried to kill that dough quite a few times, and I failed every single time. For all I know, she's still out there knocking the lesser dear senseless with her ancient hoofs Or how about this I think it was. I had quite

a bit of time to hunt in northern Wisconsin. I had a buck and a dough tag, and I thought, I just want to shoot both on public land dairy I hunt over. There has no shortage of big woods that's opened anyone, so I figured killing a dough wouldn't be much of a challenge. But I figured wrong. I got two cocky. It took me three weeks, and while I didn't hunt every day, I did hunt a lot. I got busted by every single dough that came into range until we finally got some snow and I changed

up my program to set a spot. I've been curious about. I set my stand facing away from the trail I expected them to use, and I waited in the frigid cold. In about fifteen minutes before shooting light was up, I heard the crunch, crunch, crunch of a deer coming up the trail. Since I had a buck tag and a dough tag and very low standards, and also quite a bit of PTSD from getting busted so much, I drew early,

way early. And as soon as that dough stepped out to where she could see me aiming around the trunk of that tree, she had me pegged. I mean instantly. It reminded me of one of the only bobcats I've ever seen while hunting that walked out across the field, looked up at me, sat down, and then spooted. That kitty was two hundred yards away and saw me instantly

without even trying, And so did this dough. And the only mistake that she made was that enough of her chest was visible that I had a shot, and I got it off, and I hit her well, but I'm pretty confident she would have been gone in a few seconds if I hadn't. It was a humbling three weeks of hunting my friends. I've had other experiences with doze that made me realize we should give them more credit to A recent example is when I was sitting in Wisconsin on a property I own with one of my

daughters back in October. Our blind, which I had said on a little kill plot before the season even opened, had been really kind of the hot spot, so we had hunted it a few times already. I still felt confident in a deer would come in, and as the sun set, we saw a doe looking at us from the edge of the woods. She was laser focused on the blind, so we sat like statues. She took two steps out, stopped, and then she took two steps back.

The wind was perfect. We hadn't moved, she hadn't seen us, she hadn't smelled us, and we hadn't made a sound. She just didn't like the vibes, I guess, and I thought she was leaving. So I slowly eased my binos up to my eyes and I realized that she was standing in a patch of gray wooden aspens. She was still staring. She just made sure to do it from the cover. That's also when I saw two more doughs

doing the same thing. It took five minutes, but the Leado finally walked into the plot, and when she did, she sidestepped. She tried to get our wind, and she stopped, and she looked, and she stared some more. She didn't have any funds with her, Anita did the other two dos, but that didn't seem to matter at all. Now the Leado finally decided to feed in, which sent the all clear to the other two. But I am confident we wouldn't have gotten away with that in a tree stand

she had just seen us. I'm also confident that any slight mistake on our part and the whole thing would have been over. Now. I rarely see bucks, even public land bucks act that way, but I see old does act of that KG quite a bit. It's unfortunate, really, that we focus so heavily on bucks when the doughs can help us improve our games so much by teaching us about dear. Now, this might seem like a weird

way to justify shooting more does, but it's not. I really think the lessons you can learn from trying to kill does are just as valuable as the lessons you can learn from trying to kill bucks. Now, the big difference here, and this is important, my friends, is you'll just get more opportunities with does. This is something I've harped on a lot, but most hunters just aren't closers. It's not really their fault, and I'll explain why. But

let me give you something to chew on here. Think about the biggest buck you have ever gotten a shot at. Think about your hunting buddies, or your dad, or your uncles, or whoever is in your like tight hunting circle. Think about the biggest buck they've ever got a shot at. Because I'm sure they've told you the story. How did it go? Was it an easy double lung shot that ended with a short blood trail and a trip to

the taxidermist? Maybe? Probably not. I hear a lot of the biggest buck of my life stories, and almost all of them involved the buck not riding in the back of the hunter's truck. They almost always involve a miss or a shot so poor that recovery never happened. Why. Well, there's a lot of reasons. Buck fever is the biggest one. Because we lose our minds on big bucks. We just do, whether we admit it or not. And a lot of us don't. Another factor, though, is that most of us

just haven't developed into closers. We might have developed into pretty decent deer hunters over time, but that's just like phase one or two. We still need years to get good at sealing the deal. This is not something you can shortcut. It takes close encounters that allow you the opportunity to stand exactly when you have to or draw at the perfect time. Then you have to pick a spy, aim and execute. I know this sounds so simple in practice,

but it's so hard in real life. It gets much much harder when you only get the chance to flex your closer muscles once or twice a season, or maybe once or twice every couple of seasons. This happens to the most dedicated trophy hunters out there. If they don't have easy places to hunt, they get into this space

where it's big bucks or nothing. But they aren't even good at the things it takes to make a great shot on a deer, and they won't get there at least not for a long, long long time without more experience. I'll think about it this way. If you make it a goal to fill your freezer with mature doughs, and you can get a buck tag or three dough tags in your state. Now this is hypothetical, but bear with me. You should have a lot more opportunities to fill those

dough tags. You still have a mature deer to fool that is in your red zone and fully committed to seeing another sunrise. You have to do everything right before the shot and after. Not only do you level up your preshot game, but your recovery game as well, and those are not small things in the development of a deer hunter. It's also a game changer to go out

with more than one type of animal on the hit list. Now, I get that bucks and does are the same species, but you'll put yourself in predator mode a hell of a lot more if you're open to the possibility of shooting whatever comes down the trail and not just something that's worthy of the Graham. I think this is one of the most important things about traveling to hunt, even

though it probably sounds dumb. I always buy a dough teg if some state will sell me one, because sometimes I just need to go find deer before I can hunt bucks. I have way more fun knowing that I can shoot a dough and it changes how I approach my scouting and my hanging hunt strategy. I actually think it makes me way better at home and way way better when I'm on the road. And that's what I'm gonna get into next week. Not why I think those are worthy adversaries to us as hunters, but how to

kill them. I know that sounds crazy, but I promise you at least twelve percent of it will make sense. So tune in, keep after it, and look at that empty space in your freezer as a personal challenge and not a failure. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm your host, Tony Peterson and this has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,

which is brought to you by First Light. If you want more white tail hunting no how, head on over to them eat eater dot com slash wired to read our latest articles, or visit the Wired to Hunt YouTube channel to view our weekly how to videos.